Chapter 784

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De Mirville, op. cit., ibid., p. 291. Messrs. Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of Sahara the same trilithic and raised stones which they had seen in Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished Archæologist, shows the same amazement on finding the description, given by Sir J. Simpson, of the cuplike markings on stones and rocks in England, Scotland, and other Western countries; “offering an extraordinary resemblance” to “the marks on the trap boulders which encircle the barrows near Nagpur”—the City of Snakes. The eminent scholar saw in this “another and very extraordinary addition to the mass of evidence ... that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept at an early date over Europe, penetrated into India also.” We say Lemuria, Atlantis and her Giants, and the earliest races of the Fifth Root-Race had all a hand in these betyli, lithoi, and “magic” stones in general. The cup-marks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the “holes scooped out on the face” of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Rivett-Carnac “of different sizes varying from six inches to an inch and a-half in diameter, and in depth from one to one and a-half inch ... generally arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many permutations in the number and size and arrangement of the cups”—are simply written records of the oldest races. Whosoever examines with attention the drawings made of such marks in Archæological Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc., will find therein the most primitive style of marking or recording. Something of the sort was adopted by the American inventors of the Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of the Ogham writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett-Carnac describes it, “cut on sandstone.” Sweden, Norway, and Scandinavia are full of such written records, for the Runic characters follow the cup-marks and long and short strokes. In Johannes Magnus’ Infolio one may see the representation of the demi-god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of Hroszharsgrani, the Magician), holding under each arm a huge stone covered with Runic characters. This Starkad, according to Scandinavian legend, went to Ireland and performed marvellous deeds in the North and South, East and West. (See Asgard and the Gods, pp. 218-221.)